Mick hopped up from his desk, brought a small black box around to behind the couch, and set it up with its clasp affixed to the back. He flicked a switch, and it turned on, projecting onto a white sheet he’d hung from the mantel.
The image displayed a black-and-white photo of a woman I recognized, though the picture had clearly been taken when she was in her twenties. “Jamie Kerson, with the IPB for twenty years, retired for fifteen, was found dead seven days ago in her home in Bangkok.”
Fuck. I knew Jamie well. We’d been colleagues and comrades for a long time, but our relationship was different than Spencer’s and mine.
Mick clicked on the remote in his hand, changing the slide to a more familiar image. A man, also in a black-and-white picture, alongside a more current image. Those eyes…I knew them so well. The eyes of the man who had rescued me and changed my entire life.
Fuck, given me a life.
“Spencer Ryan, with the IPB for thirty-seven years, retired for four. Found dead in his place in Toronto eight days ago.”
Focus, Liam.
“We were attacked seven days ago, like Jamie,” I said, “but these guys…they weren’t planning to kill us. They had tranquilizer darts. They were trying to—”
“Just listen, Liam,” Tara said. “It’s very clear that Spencer and Jamie were interrogated before their deaths.”
“Yes, this next part, Ty, if you’re sensitive to graphic images, might be the time to look away.”
Ty took a breath.
I could feel his tension, but he kept his eyes open as the slide switched. His face couldn’t have turned any whiter than my own as I beheld the brutality that my co-agent and superior had endured at the hands of some pond-scum who had it out for us. We weren’t looking at bodies so much as mangled meat. With what little remained of the torn flesh and blood, it was a puzzle to even figure out what belonged where.
Ty made a gagging sound but quickly recovered, saying, “I’m fine. I’m fine.”
“Mick is waiting to hack the autopsy results,” Tara said, “and we’ll have to wait for any lab tests, but from what we’ve seen so far in the crime-scene photos, we have knife lacerations, some sort of whip markings. Markings around the wrists and ankles suggesting they were bound before they were tortured, likely for intel about other IPB agents.”
“You guys were lucky you were able to get away,” Mick said. “No doubt if you hadn’t, you would have ended up just the same. Whoever did this is out for blood and intel, at the least. There’s also the matter of—”
“The fact that we were all active,” I chimed in, “under the same task force for—”
“—ten years,” Tara slipped in.
“Going off your file,” Mick added, “ten years, three months, and thirteen days.”
“Meaning I’m the only surviving member from the task force,” I noted. Spencer and Jamie had been on my team before Kyle, Mick, and Tara had joined us, years later. Hell, none of them even really knew Spencer, outside of Kyle.
“And thus, being the sole survivor, making you an IPB suspect,” Kyle said. “So it was a good thing you didn’t go trying to turn yourself in, because unlike us, they aren’t going to just go off your character, which we all know isn’t something like this.”
“They think I’m the mole,” I said. “Well, you know the rule. Never trust—”
“Hell, let’s face it, Liam,” Mick said. “We trust you more than we trust each other. Just the way it is.Trustisn’t a privilege. It’s earned one day at a time, one mission at a time, one saved life at a time. God knows you’ve saved each of our asses enough times that our lives are pretty much indebted to you. So unless you have something you want to confess to us right now, we’re all on your side here, ready to get our asses into gear and find out who the hell is responsible for this. And why they’re either setting you up to look like the mole or trying to hunt you like Spencer and Jamie for intel.”
“I haven’t sold anyone out, and I never intend to, so let’s just find these assholes, track their asses down, and make the fuckers pay.”
“That’s just the spirit we were hoping for,” Tara said. “Now we haven’t had much time to set up shop. Once word got out about the breach, we scattered and found each other. But we decided that once we got here, we’d get Mick to break into the IPB records and find out a little more about the investigations on Spencer and Jamie’s deaths. Then we’ll see if we can’t use some of that information to help us conduct our own investigation.”
“And you’re sure no agents are following any of you?” I asked, because we had to be certain.
“We had some guys on our tail back in Memphis, but Mick took care of them,” Kyle said.
“Yeah.” Mick sounded particularly proud of himself. “Hacked their tracker on Tara and had it lead them to a Best Western. Who knows when the hell they’ll figure that one out.”
“So we’re in the perfect position to manage a full-scale internal audit,” I remarked.
Our specialty.
“Hold up. Is that really your specialty?” Ty asked. “I thought you were saying you hunted down bad guys.”
